7 Tips of the Chief Customer Officer

In my blog post, “Chief Revenue Officer: A Failed Experiment or an Evolutionary Step?” I talked about how the transition to a customer-centric organization will transform many Chief Revenue Officers into Chief Customer Officers. As organizations realize that the customer experience and relationship is the asset that leads to revenues, CROs will shift focus from the revenues themselves, to the customers that deliver it.

For CROs making this transition, it may feel like unfamiliar territory. Change is difficult for any organization and for the individuals involved. I wanted to provide seven tips for executives making the transition.

1. Get Inside your Customers' Skin

In order to align all the company’s functions with developing, maintaining, sharing and performing to detailed customer experience maps, the company needs to have deep personal relationships with its customers to truly understand them.

2. Relationship Determines Revenue

Customers often value relationship more than the product or service. Find out how to invest in stronger relationships, understand customer budget bibles and match their planning cycles.

3. Break the Technology Addiction

Technology doesn’t have all the answers and it can’t auto-service the customer. Technology is a tool and we must know when and how to use it in communications and analytics to create better decision outcomes. Invest in these tools, but don’t let them replace in-person conversations and relationships with customers.

4. Revenue requires a Village

Customer-centric organizations are not natural homes for lone-wolf, “hail-Mary pass” producing sales folks. Chief Customer Officers need sales, marketing and support departments to understand the holistic experience for the customer and deliver their individual components with the same tone, cadence and channels outlined in a unified experience map.

5. Pay for Relationship Quality

People do what they are financially incentivized for. CCOs that are supporting a customer-centric transformation are replacing NPS and customer sat scores with a measurement of each function’s role in delivering a customer experience that supports revenue. Instead of MBO, churn or close rates, consider performance metrics aligned with the customer experience story board, customer engagement and peer scoring.

One of the biggest challenges facing CROs transitioning to CCO is that they don’t know or have experience in all the functions – marketing, sales, distribution, and customer service/support. At best someone might have deep experience in two but not all. That also means CCOs need to let go of tendency to ‘command and control’ and lead by example, enforce highest of ethical behavior standards, enable employees to their jobs to the best of their ability, and focus on building healthy teams.

As president of New Business Strategies, a cross-organizational customer alignment and transformation consulting and training firm, we serve high tech, discrete manufacturing, Fintech and education clients to realize measurable growth, revenue and customer preference. www.n...